The Discomfitures of Academic Life

Gellner added a footnote: “In America, a variant of this doctrine has now assumed a very specific form: the ghetto has replaced the log cabin as the point of origin which legitimates the ideas of its possessor. The ‘problem of consciousness’ is, for the moment, ignored, for there is an opportunist alliance between the oppressed ethnic minorities, yearning for respect, affluence and respectability, and the activists, sated with affluence and respectability, and yearning for épatement. (As for the white workers, no one even expects them to be revolutionary -- they appear to be lost to consciousness for good.” (Ernest Gellner, “The Panther and the Dove: Reflections on Rebelliousness and Its Milieux” In David Martin, ed., Anarchy and Culture: The Problem of the Contemporary University (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 140.) The “basket of deplorables” is the update on who is lost to consciousness.